Verify the online store set-up

An online store requires zone set-up. These zones correspond to the countries that you sell your products and will authorize purchase and delivery.

You can limit sales just to one country, to create just one zone, with one country, England for example. Or you may want to allow for sale of your products in multiple countries, for example you may create a zone for the UK including England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland.

Why use zones?

For easier shipping. Sending a package to the United States or to Ireland has a different price. It will be better to break this two distinct into two zones.
For clear payment methods. If you do not want to allow those outside your country to be able to pay by check, when you create your zones you can apply the payment methods of your choice for each unique zone.

As soon as you create your zone, the payment and delivery options are applied to all the countries within in the zone. It is imperative that you take some time to decide how you are going to organize your zones.

Create as many zones as you wish. Each zone you create you can apply the different delivery areas and the payment methods of your choice.

Define the country zone

From the menu go to Add-ons> Store> Settings> Zones, to add new fields or change the affected countries in existing zones.

A zone will have two key aspects : a name (used to determine the zone which allows you to understand what the zone is, for example, countries in this zone) and a country or countries. For a zone to be exploited, it must contain at least one country.

Note that the zone name has no special meaning: You can create a zone called "France" which contains Belgium, or "Europe" zone that contains South Africa.

Select countries to include in the zone with the list on the left or through the alphabetical menu at the top of the map. Click on the country to add to integrate it into the list of countries in the zone.
Country lists are pre-established, such as those in Europe or the US states. Click these buttons to see all the countries/states listed. Click the name of the country/state to add to the zone. You can add the other non pre-selected country by selecting them via the alphabetical menu.
To know the country currently assigned to a zone, you can zoom out the map using the mouse wheel or click on the tab "selected".
By clicking on the country name in the left list, you can remove a country from a zone(if already present in the zone), or click the flag on the map and the link to withdraw from the zone being edited.

Remember to enable the zones created.

A zone can be enabled or disabled. Turning it off, all settings defined for this zone, such as transport costs and payment methods, will be suspended. You will no longer be able to manage products and customers from this zone. The country will no longer appear in the list of countries for which sales are allowed on your online store. This can be useful if you make occasional sales abroad, or for promotions or for a specific order.

Warning: A country can not be in two different areas. If you integrate into two zones, it will not be possible to calculate the shipping costs, for example.

Maximize use of your zones of your online store

Now that your zones are created and activated, you can change the settings of your payment or your carriers.

When creating and/or modifying of your carriers and your payment, you can apply to each one or more areas of your shop. This will allow, for example whether to allow the use of a carrier for a particular area, or limit the use of a means of payment, such as checks, in an area or country.

Define the payment methods zone

To apply a zone to a payment, go to Add-ons> Store> Settings> Payment and edit existing payment means, or add a new payment method.

Check the zones of the within the pop-up window for the zones to be assigned to this payment method.

Take the example of a shirt shop with a physical store, located within London, England. The shop has created an online store to expand its business.

The Manager created a payment method that is "withdrawal in store" for customers who wish to collect their purchases in store. Since the store is in London (England), the Manager allows the use of this carrier solely for buyers who reside in England. For this, the manager will define this zone, which contains only the one country (England) to the carrier (as seen in the image at right).

The manager also wants to allow those within the zone "England" to be able to pay with credit, check, and Paypal. So by adding these payment options to the zone buyers in England have an array of delivery and payment methods.

Define the carrier zone

To apply a zone to a carrier, go to Add-ons > Store> Settings> Carrier and change the carrier to use for one or more zones, or create a new one.

Check the bottom of the pop-up areas to be assigned to that carrier.

In this example, the sending of shirts is allowed to France and Europe. The manager has created two additional areas: Europe (EU) and Europe (geographical).
Shipments are not the same price for France and for Europe, the Manager has created three carriers:

1.Removing on-site for a fee of zero euros regardless of the amount or weight of the order.

France Parcel: for shipments to France (metropolitan)

Europe package: for shipments in Europe (European Union) and Europe (geographical Europe). For this carrier, so he applied two areas, and created different weight categories for each zone corresponding to shipping to countries in these two areas.

Apply a zone to your taxes

If you are subject to taxes like VAT in France, you can create different rates at which your products are subject (the tax is affected then assigned to the product) and combine them with geographic areas (as defined in Zones) where customers will pay these taxes.

Elsewhere, customers will pay off taxes. In Add-ons> Store> Settings> Tax, or assign to the tax (s) of your products, geographical areas affected by these taxes. example: If a US customer (billing address in the United States, countries in an area called "USA" on our shop) places an order on the site, no fees will be applied as this area is not enabled for the tax " 19.6% "assigned to your store products.

An international online store

Create zones for the store so you can personalize your means of payment and delivery methods, and automatically calculate the shipping cost for each order, depending on the origin of the client.

The zones will also be used to manage payment methods to allow or prohibit the use of each form of payment, for each country, through its membership in a zone.

To enjoy all the features of e-commerce, it is possible to sell in all countries (or only those selected) with different settings that will be tailored to each client, ensuring the profitability of your online sales.

With international payment methods, like PayPal, you do not have to worry about fees and currency conversion that will be charged to your customer the payment platform calculates automatically.